Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

PSEUDO-HOMER, Batrachomyomachia (The Battle of Frogs and Mice); LIBANIUS OF ANTIOCH, Select Letters; Anonymous Grammatical Treatise; ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA, Address to Young Men on Reading Greek Literature

In Greek and Latin, manuscript on paperNorthern Italy (the Veneto?), c. 1440-1470

The disparate contents of this codex illustrate the interest of educated Renaissance humanists in the language and literature of Ancient Greece. It includes sections from four different manuscripts, now collected together in a fifteenth- or sixteenth century binding, possibly to serve as a school book and provides specimens of the handwriting of three different Greek humanists. Two sections of the text appear to have been copied by a known scribe, Francesco Rolandello, a printer, scholar, and municipal chancellor in fifteenth-century Treviso.

Provenance

1. This manuscript is a convolute, that is several manuscripts collected together in one codex, in this case consisting of four separate parts, now bound together in a near-contemporary binding. The first and last of these, ff. 1-18v, and ff. 29-38v, are copied by a single hand, that can very likely be identified as that of Franciscus Rholandellus or Francesco Rolandello (1427-1490), a printer, scholar and municipal chancellor in Treviso (Hunder, 1989, no. no. 519; and Tomè, 2012, pp.59-78). The remaining two parts, ff. 19-22, and 23-28, were written by two different Italian hands of the fifteenth century, probably by roughly contemporary scribes, also from Northeastern Italy. As a whole, the book’s disparate contents illustrate the interest of educated Renaissance humanists in ancient Greek language and literature, possibly collected together from different sources to serve as a school book.

Batrachomyomachia (falsely attributed to Homer), ending with verse 290 (the complete poem includes about 300 verses, with the number varying somewhat in different copies); with an anonymous Latin translation in prose (Knauer, 1996, 23-26, esp. p. 26). Numerous modern editions including Glei, 1984, with a German translation, and Migoubert, 1998, with a French translation; English translation, Hine, 1972.

The Batrachomyomachia, or the “The Battle of Frogs and Mice” is a short jocular poem once attributed to Homer but most probably written in the last centuries BC. It was extremly popular in its time: one hundred and fifty-five manuscript copies of it survive, about half of them from the fifteenth century. The Latin prose translation found in this manuscript served as a crib; “dozens of sixteenth-century editions and reprints of Homer’s works” (Knauer, 1996, p. 26) contain a Latin text almost identical to the one in this manuscript.

The poem was adopted as a school text that served as a short and entertaining introduction to Homer. The poet summarizes the plot in its first line, “Fain would I sound in all men's ears that awful strife, that clamorous deed of war, and tell how the Mice proved their valor on the Frogs and rivalled the exploits of the Giants, those earth-born men, as the tale was told among mortals. Thus did the war begin.” It was the first Homeric work to be translated into Latin, in a translation by the humanist Carlo Marsuppini (1399-1453) about 1429. A second translation has traditionally been attributed to the printer Aldus Manutius or to the German humanist Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522). The Latin translation included in our manuscript does differs from both these translation, and may have been composed as a school exercise.

Libanius (c. 314-393), a pagan, was the outstanding Greek rhetorician of the Late Imperial period. Born in Antioch, he taught in Athens, Constantinople, Nicomedia, as well as in his hometown. He was the author of numerous works, including a large corpus of letters of more than 1,500 letters – the largest letter collection from any author this period. They date from the period between the beginning of the 350s and 366, and from 387 and 393; among them are letters to famous contemporaries, including the emperors Julian and Theodosius, Themistius, Ammianus, and to Christian bishops, as well as letters to people who are otherwise unknown people. His letters, like the letters of his Christian student, St. Basil (see ff. 29-38v, below) were considered models of refined writing style, and survive respectivelty in some three hundred manuscripts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

An anonymous grammatical treatise, now beginning imperfectly; the text is very similar to the “Scholia Marciana,” edited by A. Hilgard, 1901, pp. 295-335. Consisting of short questions and answers, this must have served as a textbook of Greek grammar and is likely to have been compiled by a schoolmaster in the late Byzantine period (1261-1453).

Basil of Caesarea, Address to Young Men on How They Might Derive Benefit from Greek Literature, here ending imperfectly; Greek text and translation, Deferrari, 1934, pp. 378-385. The Letters of St. Basil, a student of Libanius, were very popular and survive in some two hundred and sixty manuscripts. This particular text was read widely in the schools. It was translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni in 1403, and the first edition appeared in 1496 from the Florentine press of Lorenzo de Alopa.